Herr Liszt Quotes & Sayings

That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! ...
[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism ... because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers. — Primo Levi

Tom Cruise shouldn't try to win Oscars. He should just smile and kick people in the face and leave the acting to Hugh Jackman. Why Hugh Jackman? I dunno; come up with your own example, smart-ass. — Doug Benson

It was that famous joke: What's the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? 'Hey, I wrote a song.' — Dave Grohl

It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are. — Samuel R. Delany

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine. — Chuck Palahniuk

The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained - an urn in daylight. — Margaret Atwood

The ideal hole (course) is surely one that affords the greatest pleasure to the greatest number. — Alister MacKenzie

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland. — Robert Harris

How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find: — Samuel Johnson

8:30 P.M.: Personal time. Free of Reznik at last. We wash our jumpsuits, shine our boots, scrub the barracks floor and the latrine, clean our rifles, pass around dirty magazines, and swap other contraband like candy and chewing gum. We play cards and bust each other's nuts and complain about Reznik. We share the day's rumors and tell bad jokes and push back against the silence inside our own heads, the place where the never-ending voiceless scream rises like the superheated air above a lava flow. Inevitably — Rick Yancey

Heaven knows what virtue it has, this ecstatic book. — Virginia Woolf